by Von Hardesty
Whether as a dream or a nightmare, the prospect of humankind exploring outer space became a vital part of American popular culture in the 1950s. Implicit in the fascination with space was a sort of celestial manifest destiny—the shared sensibility that humans would follow the imperative to explore the far reaches of the cosmos. Many shared a keen awareness that the space age, indeed, had arrived, but that human aspirations (and fears) needed to be reconciled with the realities of technology. Arthur Clarke prophesied in 1955 that humans would land on the moon by 1980, give or take 10 years. His prophecy was made before Sputnik and the Apollo program, suggesting the optimism of space visionaries in the decade of the 1950s. As events would prove, reality would outdo fiction, because the space race was just beginning in earnest.
THE SURPRISE ATTACK PANEL
As president, Eisenhower was convinced that sustained intelligence on Soviet capabilities was essential because of the near-complete secrecy surrounding all their military activities. This imperative reflected a persistent fear of a surprise attack on America by the Soviet Union. The potential devastation of such a surprise attack was underscored by the Soviet Union’s testing of a thermonuclear device, potentially hundreds of times more powerful than an atomic bomb, in August 1953, just 10 months after the first U.S. hydrogen-bomb test. Such a threat raised the specter of American cities and industrial centers laid to waste. Eisenhower and his generation had experienced directly the attack on Pearl Harbor, which shaped the desire to gain advance warning on the intentions of the Soviet Union. The possibility of a nuclear “bolt from the blue” haunted military planners. Within 18 months of assuming office, Eisenhower established the interagency National Indications Center, chaired by the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to prepare “watch reports” and to study strategic warning indicators.12
The CIA, along with the Air Force, took an active role in assessing the dimensions of the Soviet threat. Beyond traditional spying to breach the Iron Curtain, the United States utilized a variety of other methods, including airborne photo and electronic reconnaissance missions on the periphery of the Soviet Union. The goal was to record and analyze radar signals and communications traffic to learn the Soviets’ capabilities in these areas as well as to photograph air bases, harbors, and other Soviet “targets of interest.” Some U.S. spy flights dashed deep into Soviet territory on very dangerous penetrations that sometimes resulted in the loss of American aircraft and their crews to Soviet fighter jets or missiles. Later in the decade, American activities included the construction of a broad band of radar dishes and giant antennas in places such as Alaska, Turkey, and Iran to peer into the Soviet Union to monitor missile tests and communications signals.13
These efforts yielded considerable data on the Soviet threat. In the spring of 1954, President Eisenhower decided an additional step was necessary, the creation of a special task force to consider three areas of national security—continental defense, strike forces, and intelligence.14 The committee was later renamed the Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP). The high-powered group was chaired by James Killian, president of MIT and chairman of Eisenhower’s Science Advisory Committee. The TCP’s mandate was to assess the Soviet Union’s military capability to inflict a surprise nuclear attack on America.
The TCP report, entitled “Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack,” reached Eisenhower in February 1955. The timely recommendations from this document made a profound impact on the American defense establishment in the years that followed. Killian’s task force focused on certain vulnerabilities to a potential Soviet attack. For example, the TCP argued that if the United States suffered a devastating nuclear strike, the nation would nonetheless “emerge a battered victor.” Given the potential of thermonuclear weapons, the TCP recommended an accelerated program to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—Atlas and, later, Titan and Minuteman—and land-and sea-based intermediate-range missiles—Thor, Jupiter, and Polaris.15
The TCP report made a forceful conclusion. Although the United States had an offensive advantage, because of its far larger nuclear-armed strategic bomber fleet, it was vulnerable to a surprise attack. The U.S. needed a reliable early warning (radar) system to alert it to an impending Soviet bomber attack, plus targeting information for a counterattack against the U.S.S.R. The TCP recommended a number of specific steps. First among them, the U.S. Air Force’s Atlas ICBM development effort should be granted the highest priority. The panel also called for construction of a radar network in the Arctic to detect Russian bombers. Other major suggestions included the design and construction of nuclear-powered submarines, armed with ballistic missiles and capable of remaining submerged for long periods of time.16
One section of the TCP report addressed intelligence collection and methods. Its head, Edwin H. Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, wrote, “We must find ways to increase the number of hard facts upon which our intelligence estimates are based.”17 An early form of aerial surveillance was created at the Lockheed Aircraft’s famed “Skunk Works” in the mid-1950s. Lockheed’s renowned aircraft designer, Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, came up with a brilliant design for a new high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. The spy plane became known as the U-2, and it would play a major role in these tense years of the Cold War. The U-2—once flown in great secrecy—soared above the Soviet heartland with highly sophisticated cameras. The U-2 missions brought back revealing data on Soviet military and rocket activities. The extraordinary cameras for the U-2 were designed by Land and other technicians and could capture images of basketball-sized objects from 70,000 feet above the Earth. What made the U-2 effective for so long was the fact that its cruising altitude was outside the range of Soviet anti-aircraft weapons.
Military planners, though, dreamed about the future use of Earth satellites, which would eliminate the risk of interception and offer greater coverage. For example, if they were launched into a polar (north-to-south) orbit, that would put the entire planet in camera range. The TCP’s findings also focused on the Eisenhower administration’s need to “legitimize” space reconnaissance, a preliminary step essential to pave the way for the widespread use of satellites. This principle was embodied in the notion of “freedom of space,” the right of any nation to orbit a satellite without reference to “air space” limitations. This idea was first discussed in the RAND Corporation’s milestone 1950 study. It proposed the use of a small, non-military satellite, placed in an orbit that avoided passage over the U.S.S.R., as a way to establish a precedent for “freedom of space.”18 (RAND started out as a team of scientists and engineers at the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1946, hired by the Army Air Forces to study the possibility of orbiting an Earth satellite. Two years later, it was spun off from Douglas and became a highly influential independent nonprofit think tank.19) The TCP reaffirmed the concept, calling for “a re-examination of the principles of freedom of space, particularly in connection with the possibility of launching an artificial satellite into orbit…in anticipation of use of larger satellites for intelligence purposes.”20 Any discussion of the concept was welcomed by the Air Force, which had been thinking about such possibilities for years. As far back as in a 1951 study, RAND foresaw that a then-new technique—television—could be harnessed to deliver space-based reconnaissance as an alternative to snapping photos from orbit and then somehow dropping them back to Earth in a timely fashion. That new technique was just coming into millions of American homes in the post-war era.21
Other studies further explored the options for recovering images from space, including taking photographs on film and then returning them in a reentry capsule that would be caught in midair as it floated down to Earth. The Air Force moved very quickly following release of the Killian Committee report. Within a month, in March 1955, the Air Force contracted with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in California to create “a strategic reconnaissance satellite weapons system,” designated WS-117L. This became one of America’s earliest space programs.22
GAINING THE STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE
At the end of World War II, the United States enjoyed a decided advantage over the Soviets in strategic bombers, which at the time offered the sole means of delivering nuclear bombs. The Soviets developed the Tu-4, which was a close copy of the American B-29 Superfortress. However, its ability to threaten the United States was severely limited. Both nations quickly built jet-powered bombers and sought to design ballistic missiles. This rivalry spilled over into the 1950s. To gain further advantage, the U.S. began stationing nuclear-armed bombers in the United Kingdom in the late 1940s. By 1953, it began replacing its piston-engine B-29s and B-50s with significant numbers of a new jet bomber, the very advanced swept-wing B-47, and these bombers were soon dispatched to air bases in Britain, Morocco, and Spain. In addition, the U.S. Strategic Air Command introduced the behemoth B-36, a truly intercontinental bomber that could deliver nuclear attacks on the Soviet Union from bases in the United States.
Soviet Russia faced the potential of a massive nuclear attack in any future war. The Soviets fielded a new generation of jet-powered bombers and other advanced aircraft, but these strides did not guarantee any enhanced security.23 Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, bequeathing to his successor Nikita Khrushchev the daunting task of resolving the strategic inequality. Khrushchev faced a dilemma: Should he seek to match the long-standing and effective U.S. bomber force? Or, should he reject the idea of building a huge manned-bomber force and opt instead for missiles? The latter option might offer the way to threaten the United States with a large arsenal of intercontinental missiles.24 In the end, Khrushchev would deploy both bombers and missiles, but he firmly believed in the efficacy of ICBMs, and the Strategic Rocket Forces were created in December 1959.
The United States had started thinking about its own ICBM development as early as 1946, but the project was cancelled after only 15 months, a victim of sharp postwar reductions in military spending.25 This attitude changed in the wake of Russia’s atomic bomb test and the Korean War. In addition to developing the hydrogen bomb, the U.S. resumed intercontinental missile development in the spring of 1951, with a government contract award to San Diego–based Convair to develop the Atlas ICBM.
The task facing the designers was daunting: The Atlas as conceived in 1951 was to fly 5,000 miles and deliver an 8,000-pound atomic warhead. The demand for precision accuracy, though, was still beyond the realm of possibility. The Air Force’s bomber standard was to put an A-bomb within 1,500 feet of the target. Military planners believed that an ICBM would have to match that kind of accuracy—after flying thousands of miles from its launch site. That was an enormous problem, and for the moment, at least, an unsolvable one, given the technology of the day.26 Lacking such pinpoint accuracy, an ICBM with an atomic warhead would simply not be of much use as a strategic weapon—it would land too far from the target to destroy it, even with a nuclear blast. As a result of these concerns, Convair’s Atlas received only low levels of funding from its inception in 1951 through 1954. However, a solution to the accuracy issue was on the way in the form of the hydrogen bomb. Its sheer explosive force would obliterate the target even if the weapon missed it by a significant distance.
For both the United States and the Soviet Union, the ICBM offered the optimal delivery system for a thermonuclear device, outclassing existing strategic bombers. ICBMs would supply a swift and lethal response to any nuclear attack and defy defense systems. Both nations began work on so-called “lightweight” hydrogen bombs, meaning the payloads for ballistic missiles could be cut by half or even more. The Atlas design, for instance, evolved from a seven-engine, 160-foot monster to three engines and only 75 feet in length.27
A subsequent report by the RAND Corporation concluded that ICBMs had become practical and feasible years sooner than previously expected. The report offered an additional, and crucial, assessment, based on U.S. intelligence about Soviet missile development. The superpower race to field an ICBM was under way, and the Soviets were ahead.28
THE REDSTONE MAKES ITS DEBUT
The Pentagon ordered the Army and von Braun at the Redstone Arsenal to use the V-2 experience to develop a tactical rocket that could deliver a nuclear warhead over a range of up to 500 miles, with longer-range ballistic missiles certain to follow. Soon the range was reduced from 500 to 200 miles—a tradeoff for a heavier payload—and the missile was given the name Redstone. In developing the new rocket, von Braun used some of the same management techniques successfully employed at Peenemünde in creating the V-2. These included strong internal research and development, in-house production of prototype Redstones, and even test manufacturing of the first few production models before turning that task over to the production contractor, Chrysler Corporation.29 While this new rocket was based on the V-2, it was, nonetheless, a unique opportunity to design, construct, and test a modern rocket, one that would supersede the pioneering work at Peenemünde in a dramatic way.
When completed, the Redstone represented an important advance over the V-2. The Redstone’s warhead and guidance system, for example, was contained in a reentry vehicle that separated from the main body of the rocket (unlike the V-2, where the entire rocket body returned to Earth in one piece). The guidance system used a computer and an inertial navigation system contained in the warhead and relied totally upon onboard instruments. To reduce the missile’s weight, the fuel tanks were formed by the outer surface of the rocket rather than being housed separately inside it. Most noteworthy of all, the Redstone was one of the earliest American weapons to combine the atomic bomb and the guided missile, two breakthrough technologies of World War II.30
The 69-foot-long Redstone, powered by a liquid-fueled rocket developing 78,000 pounds of thrust, began test flights in August 1953 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Despite the built-in drawbacks—it took eight hours to assemble, erect, and make ready a Redstone for launch in the field—it was later deployed in Europe, armed with a four-megaton thermonuclear warhead (equivalent to four million tons of TNT).31 Modified versions of the Redstone would later make major contributions to the American space program, propelling the first American satellite and the first American astronaut into space.
Even as von Braun worked to perfect the Redstone for the Army as a weapon of war, he persisted in his dream that the same rockets could provide the first real steps toward the coming age of human space exploration. Besides his work with Collier’s and the Disney television shows, whenever he found audiences that would listen, in Alabama or elsewhere, he made his case for space travel.
SERGEI KOROLEV’S NEW ROCKETS
Similarly, in the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev and others had their own dreams of using the rockets of war for the parallel purpose of advancing the voyage of humans and machines into space. Korolev never surrendered his dreams, and he took every opportunity to discuss his ideas with like-minded colleagues. But the Russian situation was far different: In a closely watched communist society, they were not usually free to advocate space exploration or anything else that the government had not endorsed.
Since the war Korolev and his team had enjoyed some hard-won successes. He labored for some time to convince minister of armaments Dmitriy Ustinov that he required a significant degree of autonomy if his operation, NII-88’s Department No. 3, was to achieve major improvements in rocket design, development, manufacture, and reliability. Finally, in April 1950, Ustinov agreed to a reorganization of NII-88 that consolidated several departments under Korolev’s leadership to create OKB-1 (Special Design Bureau 1). Korolev was named chief and chief designer of the new bureau. OKB-1’s sole mission was long-range ballistic missile development.32
Later that year, Korolev’s team began launch tests of the R-2, an evolutionary improvement on the V-2 (renamed the R-1 in Soviet production) that doubled the R-1’s range to nearly 400 miles. The R-2’s design illustrated an interesting aspect of both sides’ early ballistic missile development: Though each worked in great secrecy, the United States and the U.S.S.R. nonet
heless independently came up with several similar advanced concepts. Both an early American ICBM test vehicle, the MX-774, and the later U.S. Army Redstone shared with the R-2 the decision to dispense with separate internal fuel tanks, using instead the missile’s outer skin for fuel storage, thereby achieving significant weight reduction. All three missiles also employed a separate warhead for reentry at the end of the ballistic flight trajectory to avoid problems encountered when the entire missile body reentered the atmosphere.33
In addition to missile development, the Soviet Union was moving rapidly in several other areas critical to its Cold War rivalry with the United States. Soviet priorities included development of its own H-bomb, mating that weapon with Korolev’s ballistic missiles, countering its rival’s overwhelming dominance in nuclear-armed, manned bombers and creating air defense weapons. These advanced technology initiatives were so vital that a new entity was created to manage them. It was called the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (known by the acronym MSM) to mask its true purpose. MSM was headed by Vyacheslav Malyshev, an experienced top manager in the Soviet defense industry.34
The R-2 overcame a series of flawed test launches during its development. It saw operational service with the Soviet army and contributed to OKB-1’s experience, knowledge, and skills. Most important, it was a vital development on the road to Soviet ICBMs, effectively the final step in the process of learning everything possible from the German rocket experience. Korolev’s OKB-1 was ready now to strike out into new frontiers, even as it continued to be influenced by the Germans’ achievements.35